Oakland to follow San Francisco’s plastic bag ban
A measure has been passed by the key City Council Committee in Oakland to ban plastic bags from grocery stores and other large retailers similar to the ban adopted in San Francisco earlier this year. If the measure is approved, it could take effect in August preventing any retailer grossing more than $1 million a year from using the nonbiodegradable plastic bags. The measure is sponsored by Councilwomen Nancy Nadel and Jean Quan. 10% of petroleum is used to create the plastic bags and Californians use 19 billion plastic disposable bags each year. This ban will encourage more shoppers to use cloth or other reuseable bags for groceries and shopping. There have been different efforts in reducing plastic bag usage around the world such as Ikea charging 5 cents per bag. In New Zealand, Supermarket chains Foodstuffs and Progressive Enterprises have also recently announced a joint campaign to cut down on the number of plastic bags handed out. The republic of Ireland currently has a 15 cent tax on plastic shopping bags which started in 2002 and has caused a 90% reduction on plastic bag usage.
Plastic shopping bags were first introduced in 1977. Only 0.6 percent of the plastic bags are recycled as 100 billion plastic bags are thrown away in America. It takes 1,000 years for plastic bags to degrade. Plastic bags contain chemical additives that can be harmful to human health and the environment and are toxic to animals. An estimated 100,000 birds, and mammals die from eating plastic bags every year.
V Smoothe said,
June 27, 2007 @ 12:51 pm
A few corrections to this story.
1. 10% of oil is not used to make plastic bags. 10% of oil in the US is used to make all plastic. 12 million barrels of oil are used annually to make all plastic bags used in the US. To put the number in perspective, that amount is equivalent to roughly 35 gallons of gasoline per Bay Area resident.
2. The measure has not been passed in Oakland. It has been forwarded from the city’s Public Works Committee to the City Council. The City Council will first consider the ordinance on Tuesday.
3. Nowhere in the ordinance is there anything about educating the public about reusable bags. In fact, the staff report explicitly rejects consumer education as ineffective. With no effort by the city to encourage the use of reusable bags, the effect will simply be for people to switch to paper bags, which are far worse for the environment than plastic and take the same about of time to degrade.
4. On Sunday, a state law will go into effect creating mandatory plastic bag recycling programs at supermarkets. Neither the staff report nor the ordinance addresses the potential impacts of this new policy.
Click here for more information about Oakland’s bag ban
admin said,
June 27, 2007 @ 1:07 pm
Thanks V Smoothe for the updates. Some of the info was just taken from the SFGate article.
V Smoothe said,
June 27, 2007 @ 1:39 pm
No problem. The SFGate article had several errors.
I would like to see the City Council reject the ordinance as written and return with a more carefully considered report and proposal that includes a consumer education campaign about reusable bags and perhaps some funding to provide them. Without this I believe that the ordinance will do more harm than good.
China bans plastic bags said,
January 8, 2008 @ 1:00 pm
[...] China just announced that they are going to be banning thin plastic bags from being handed out at stores and supermarkets. The cabinet said that finance athorities should also consider raising taxes that discourage the production and sale of plastic bags. China uses up to 3 billion plastic bags a day and refines 5 million tons of crude oil every year to make the plastics that are used for packaging. Several different countries around the world have been doing something similar in banning bags and taxing the production of thin plastic bags. Previous entries about plastic bag bans are here and here. [...]